Amos, I'm getting closer on the Shatner thing. I spoke to him briefly today, and he's showing some curiosity. I explained how you are a legend in your area and all that...he said he might be able to spare some time in July or August.

By the way, something just occurred to me. You remember how for the past 10 years or so I was trying desperately to secure one of those Hillary Clinton inflatable dolls, but couldn't find one anywhere? Not even on Ebay?

Well, it seems that someone bought them all up...all the remaining ones of which there were very few...yes, someone bought them up at a fantastic price...and had them all destroyed.

Same thing with Billy Clinton back in 98 I believe, and those Peter Puff-Up Pecker inflatables in the SLick Willy limited edition. ABout a hundred thousand of them flew off the shelves into the hands of impassioned female voters before the guys in dark suits started showing up at every F Street Bookstore int he country and cleaning out the inventory.

There was a lawsuit by the entrepreneurs, but it got hushed up, and I believe they ended up with ambassadorships to two small central European countries.

The NKVD had something like that for "special prisoners", but I really really don't want to discuss it. PM me if you feel the need to know the details. That way Mom won't be all upset and feel the need to sit down, fan herself, and have yet another mint julep.

There it was, sitting right out in front of God and everybody, surrounded by a ecumenical coterie of priests, bishops, rabbis, vicars, prelates, pastors, sextons, and umbrella-wielding Anglo-Irish fatwahs all of whom were denigrating and deriding the Gospel and the FSM, right there is good old quasi-Catholic Ireland.

But I bought it.

Now I am shunned, excommunicated, branded heretical, cussed out, and my morals, ethics, spirituality, and probable destination in any afterlife have been roundly and completely discussed ad nauseam.]

I'm proud of me, for as Mark Twain said, "Heaven for the climate and Hell for the company."

So the book boy was banned, and his fate was pathetic: He was tied up and burned, at the stake, as heretic! But as the flames rose, sir, there came a halooo: The book boy still yelling, "Your book's overdue!"

MOM wants to know if one of you boys will dig the hammock out of the attic and put it up on the screened-in porch. There's so much hot air in the house she thinks sleeping outside might be more comfortable.

I started a new thread with a nifty site called Muckety.com where you can explore the connections between individuals, organizations, locations, etc. It seemed too good to keep to just ourselves.

I tried quite a few names and I only scratched the surface. Some of the names I ran were Harlan Crow (the Google search that let me hit the site to begin with), Bill Gates (III), Dick Cheney, Rupert Murdoch, Bob Dylan, Bill Clinton, and when you click on any of the links this site maps it they rearrange themselves. You can get the names of folks who rent apartments in the building where Murdoch, lives, etc. It's like following a Google map of people and places.

Actually, it's vented at the gable edges. That is, where the roof edge is /\ a ridge vent was installed that overlaps the fascia. This is much more practical out here because it cuts down on the dust that blows in while providing the necessary venting for insulation efficiency. It also protects the fasciae from the weather and helps to anchor the roof shingles.

Oh, yes! When I paid the contractor yesterday he told me that we were lucky: the price of roofing shingles have just jumped US $20.00 per square and more increases are expected. He's honoring the costs for the jobs he's bid, but anything new is at the higher rate.

I'm not surprised. Everything is going up. When you were the low end shopper to begin with (did you hear the NPR interview last week where the woman had to stop buying organic veggies at Whole Foods?) there isn't a lot of wiggle room. More seeds and more garden space committed to veggies.

A buddy and I went flying this morning, from Gillespie Field out in El Cajon. We had a lovely li'l SkyHawk, and we zipped away from the surly bonds of earth, which are particularly plangent in El Cajon, and ducked past the edge of El Capitan, over the high eastern ridges that form the guard wall of the region, and down among the high canyons and valleys of the mountain passes and --swoosh!--down into the Anza Borrego desert. We did a few touch-and-gos and went over to the Agua Caliente airstrip for a look see, and then back over the hills and into El Cajon and down to earth once again.

It was loverly, but it feels very strange to be 4,500 feet up, looking down on the kingdoms of earth from a seat in a vibrating tin shell...very strange.